Tyrant's Lament
by Tempestt
Summary: No one really understands what it is to be a tyrant.


Disclaimer: I do not own DBZ

Tyrant's Lament

I can taste my own blood as it slips down the back of my throat, thick and syrupy. I had almost forgotten it's been so long. Not since my daily lessons have I had the displeasure of my mortality staining my teeth.

My brother has always been the warrior. The pride of my father's eye. As the first born he could do no wrong, meeting our family's every expectation without faltering. Every day he would come to my training sessions, antagonizing me, criticizing me. Every day he would push aside my trainer, boasting how he would make a soldier out of his little brother. Every day I would spend an hour in the regeneration tank, thinking on his lessons while yet another broken bone mended, another wound in my psyche scarred. Perhaps it was he who taught me the pleasure of pain.

At a young age I knew I was different. 'Perverse' was the word my father used. He said that such inclinations had their uses, but not in the light of courtly chambers. My perversions were best kept to the shadows of the bedroom and the dredge of the dungeons. Always was I a disappointment to my father. Always was my brother the favored one.

I spent hours listening to my father as he made decisions that ripped apart galaxies. He was a brute, using force, showing his whole hand, never concealing. He lacked finesse. Instead of torture he would kill, instead of enslaving he would obliterate. Nothing but a big dumb brute, and my brother is just the same, but I love them. I love them as much as any Ice-ling could. All I ever wanted was for them to love me too.

Love. A word never to be spoken, never to be expressed. But I feel love. I feel it more intensely than hate.

I remember my first crush as if it was yesterday. He was so young, so tender. Precious and perfect in every way. He tasted like sweet berries, barely ripened under the summer sun. I wanted him so badly that it hurt in every crevice, every scale of my body.

When I took him, he screamed. A pure, undulating sound of terror. It was delicious. I drank every drop. His screams were so intoxicating that I didn't hear the pounding at my bedchamber door, or the shouts from the hall. I drank him until he was dry, until his wide, panic-dilated eyes only saw me.

My father and brother burst through the door, their horns shined for battle. They skidded to stop, staring in astonishment as I lifted my head from the barely recognizable mass of blood and bone staining my silken sheets. Their awe turned to disgust before my eyes. At that moment I knew what love was, and I knew what it was like to have it trampled into the ground.

My father turned away without a word, stepping away from my door, away from me. My brother opened his mouth, but he couldn't find the words. I never knew what he meant to say. That our family was above such behavior? That I was wrong? That I was a monster? He too moved away, leaving me alone with the remains of my first love. How I wished I could have them back. All of them.

At my coming-of-age gala, my brother slapped me on the back and asked me if I wanted to spend a month on a pleasure planet for my gift. I told him no, I wanted to own it. He laughed, barking out words between great big snorting chuckles. He said that's what he liked about me, my humor. Every one knew that a male with my preferences had no taste for war, no talent for ruling. My father joined in with his own rollicking laughter. What use is it to rule he said, if I would never have any Ice-lings to bequeath my domains too? His 'pretty, little daughter he never had' he called me and patted me on the head as he walked away.

What they never quite realized is that I am a genius. A far better lord than they could ever be. I know when to show strength, but more than that, I know when to demure, to connive, to deceive. My father conquered worlds, but entire galaxies bow at my feet with a single speech from my smirking lips.

I'm a god compared to them, but do they ever see me for what I am? Does my father ever visit my ship with a word of praise? I gather galaxy after galaxy under my domain, only to have my father laugh as he claims my prowess as his own, absorbing my hard won planets into his collection. Always with some snide remark. _How did you do it this time, son? Betrayal? Lies? Assassination?_ Even when I win a world by the sheer glory of my power, still not a single proud word. Only that I should be stronger, more virile in battle. _What-- only three transformations? My dear, dear child, when will you ever achieve the fourth?_ Only words of scorn, of hate, never of love, never of praise.

The contempt doesn't stop there. It spreads across the universe like a wildfire. Here I lay, a victim of ill humor, of a misunderstanding. Monster, demon, they say. Never do they see me for what I really am---a benevolent leader. I should be revered, admired, _loved._

Something heavy is pressing on my chest, but I can't dislodge it. My arms won't obey; they just lay like leaden weights at my sides. I want to breathe, but searing flames are licking their way down into my lungs. I raise my head, looking beyond my chest, expecting to see my feet, but there is nothing, only a bloody pool where my legs used to be. My neck hurts. My head feels like a two hundred pound ball of petrified bone. I can't hold my head up any longer. It hits the ground with a thud, and dull pain ricochets around in my skull like a ki blast.

I have done so much. I bring peace to the warring, and food to the starving. Ungrateful, wretched, filthy masses! I bring order among chaos, change poverty to prosperity. Yet still they hate me, despise me even. I cannot fathom why after I have done so much to better their way of life. Because of me there is rampant trade between worlds that twenty years ago didn't even realize what space travel was. I have relocated billions, giving them sanctuary on newly cleansed planets. They smile to my face while plotting behind my back. They think I can't hear, that I don't know, but I do. I know everything. No one will ever be clever enough to defeat me.

I admit I have murdered, destroyed, annihilated, humiliated---yes humiliation is my specialty. How I love to take apart someone's psyche, turning them against themselves, creating the monster they swore they would never be, cultivating the bloom as it grows. But do I ever hear a thank you? Do they ever turn a beatific smile of gratitude in my direction? I allow them _to be_. I allow them to look inside at the deepest, darkest depths within themselves and accept it. I show them how glorious it is to be wicked. I encourage it. Everyone is born evil, but they condemn their true self, curtailed by their social views, denied by their cultural morality.

I bring such poetry into the universe. Yet, all I hear are wails of _why, why, why?_ How can they be so ungrateful, selfish, wretched? Don't they understand? I am building a better existence. Would they prefer to be blown to dust by my mindless brute of a father? To be gone in an eye blink? I bring them long moments filled with intensity, of pain and despair; I savor every drop of their life so they might never be forgotten, and they curse me for it.

What am I to expect from lesser beings? They can never comprehend the full glory that is me.

No one understands. No one ever understands. No matter how many people I try to tell, how many I try to show, they never get it. They never get me. One by one, I show them how magnificent I am, but they never see it until the end. Not until they are broken and bloody. At the end, when their last breath leaves them, and I am helpless to follow. Only then do they see, do they understand.

I think perhaps my last love may have seen inside of me. He may have seen beyond the blackness of my heart. My prince, my darling prince. So proud, so strong. I never did break him, and now he is gone. Murdered by my own hand, like my first love. Perhaps the reason he refused to break was because he saw the truth. Hate can be destroyed, love can be broken, but power is priceless. _Godly_.

My vision is starting to blur, but I can see that blonde freak who has brought me so low. Me, wallowing in the dirt like a common slave, bleeding from wounds, actual wounds! His lips are moving, his expression stern. I strain to hear him, and through the hollow of my bleeding ears I can barely make out his words. He wants me to denounce myself. To promise to be a better person. Doesn't he understand that I am a god? Doesn't he know who I am?

I am the ultimate ruler of the universe. Someday my father will acknowledge that I am the better lord, that I am worthy of being his son.

I can't take his useless ramblings any longer. There! He has turned his back. This is my chance. I gather together the last remaining strands of my strength, molding it together into a ball. All of my hate, all of my pain, becomes a burning sun in my hands.

I will win. I will not fail. My father will see me for who I am. My subjects will love me, love what I do to them. I will make it a better universe. A universe just like me. One that doesn't see me as perverse, as a monster. A universe that reveres me. One by one I shape them, and there are so many out there waiting for me to show them the way.

The sun flies away, blinding me with its golden light.

I will not fail.

I will win.

My father will love me.


End file.
